#overheard at marine headquarters

[cipher-zoo]

Helmeppo & Koby: *sitting on deck watching a rare argument between Garp and Bogard*

Helmeppo: If one of them comes over here and tells me it's my fault they are getting a divorce, it's almost like my family vacations back in the day.

Koby:...

Koby: Knowing you makes me glad I'm an orphan.

[chenziee]

I'm glad you like the my last prompt ♥😎.

I have one that is almost like my last one.

AU: Where Marine Admrial Monkey D Luffy keeps getting "kidnapped" by one Trafalgar Law. The kidnappings are starting to get out of hand. In a middle of a battle, a walk on the town, in his office, meetings with the other admrials, and one time in the during a meeting with the Five Elder Stars. It's driving everybody crazy.

Thank you so much for another cute prompt! I hope you like it :D

Also HAPPY BIRTHDAY LUFFY! I’m so late but I cannot keep track of the date lately whoops?

This is the last request for this batch! I’ll post on here again when/if I decide to reopen again :D Thank you to everyone for your support, every day I’m blown away by the love ;__;

—————

Not so bad

[Read on AO3 or under the cut]

There were a lot of rumors about Admiral Monkey D. Luffy. Some of them were true, some were exaggerated, some were complete lies. Even at navy headquarters, there weren’t many people who knew for sure which were which but some of those stories seemed so ludicrous that all the young, hopeful recruits could at least rule a few out when talking about it during their free time.

After all, there was no way a single man could eat a month’s worth of food in one sitting. And he might have become an Admiral at a scandalously young age but it also couldn’t have been possible for him to single handedly beat two Warlords at seventeen years of age. And who’d ever heard about anyone being immune to the Pirate Empress’ beauty, or her devil fruit? Completely absurd, all of it.

The single, most ridiculous story, however, was the one about how he could just disappear. He would be eating lunch in the cafeteria and suddenly, he would be gone. Or you could be out on patrol with him, looking for pirates and chatting with the townspeople, and then you’d blink and realize you were talking to the air. Some of the older marines had told Coby that Monkey D. Luffy was like a ghost or a mirage sometimes; but all the young soldiers training under Vice-Admiral Garp agreed their seniors were just trying to impress them, scare them, or maybe playing a joke on them.

That was what Coby believed as well, until he started noticing weird happenings himself.

The first time things made him pause was one chilly October evening when he had stayed behind in the cafeteria to study. At one point, Admiral Luffy came in, barefoot and wearing nothing but shorts and a thin, open red shirt, simply nodding at Coby as he headed straight to the kitchen; Coby could only assume he was coming to steal some snacks. Iit was only while he was falling asleep hours later that Coby had realized he had never seen the Admiral leave.

About a week after that, he walked past Vice Admiral Garp’s office, and even though he wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, it was impossible not to overhear when the two of them were talking.

“Luffy, you need to stop this!” Garp shouted, closely followed by what could only be Admiral Luffy groaning.

“Well, I don’t wanna! We’re having fun!” Luffy snapped back, equally loud.

There was a pause then, and Coby could just imagine the way his mentor puffed up as he took a deep breath. It was what he always did when he was getting ready to chew someone out. He was really glad he wasn’t on the receiving end this time. 

A moment later, Garp finally replied, “Think about the timing! He can’t just up and kidnap you in the middle of a conversation— GODDAMN IT GET BACK HERE, YOU LITTLE BRATS!”

Coby took the scream as his cue to hide behind the nearest corner. Still, when Garp stormed out of his office, he couldn’t help but glance back. The room was empty.

Then finally, a few months later—months during which Coby had witnessed many small incidents of the Admiral not being where he was supposed to be, and overheard several conversations about a ‘habit of Luffy’s’—Garp tasked Coby to accompany the Admiral to a meeting. Coby resigned himself to be forced to hand out papers to the Admiral’s subordinates all afternoon but he tried to focus on the bright side. Maybe, if he was lucky, he would get to talk to some of them. He would love to ask Roronoa Zoro on some pointers with training at the very least; the man was well known as a monster all around the headquarters—and the Grand Line as a whole, really.

However, the reality was worse than anything he had imagined. So much worse.

Coby supposed he should feel honoured that he had somehow found himself acting the bodyguard in a meeting with the Five Elders but to be honest, he would have rather been quite literally anywhere else right then. The Elders were incredibly intimidating to say the least and Coby was too terrified to even look at the men directly.

The Admiral wasn’t helping with making this easier to deal with either. Coby had to wonder if he was riling them up on purpose; after all, who called the Elders ‘old men’ and told them that hunting down the Emperor Trafalgar Law was ‘a pain in the butt so he wasn’t gonna do it?’ And Coby had thought the way the Admiral talked to Vice Admiral Garp and Fleet Admiral Sengoku was disrespectful…

Just as Coby thought it couldn’t get worse, the Admiral stretched his rubbery arm to grab an entire tray of food from a table all the way across the room. Coby could almost see his life flashing before his eyes when one of the little tarts that were piled up on the tray flew off, and nearly hit one of the Elders in the face. The man froze in the middle of a sentence, a scandalized look in his eyes while Luffy only apologized half-heartedly, simply stretching out his other arm to snatch the tart before it even hit the floor.

As if that wasn’t enough, after he stuffed his mouth so full that Coby was positive if he wasn’t made of rubber, his cheeks would burst, the Admiral turned to look at Coby behind him, gesturing for him to help himself. Coby was so light-headed, so resigned to his imminent death, that he didn’t even think about it and automatically reached out to blindly grab some of the food.

Right in that moment, something like a blue, see-through film ran through the room and Luffy’s face split in the widest grin imaginable, his eyes nearly sparkling as he quickly reached out to securely grab the tray with both hands, accidentally catching Coby’s hand as well.

A split second later, before Coby could so much as blink, his surroundings completely changed.

Instead of the spacious, airy, luxurious room, he found himself in a much darker and comparatively tiny enclosed space, which was full of people and so much noise. Did he faint? Was this one of his anxiety dreams? For the first time in his life, he sure as hell hoped so. After all, what other explanation was there for the room shrinking and changing shape, people materializing out of nowhere, and for the constant metallic hum which Coby could only assume was an engine running? Actually, if Coby didn’t know better, he’s say he had somehow teleported into a submarine’s dining room.

“Torao!” someone suddenly shouted right in his ear. “Thanks so much, I thought I’d die of boredom!” There was a split second pause before something that felt like a cold metal disk was shoved deep into Coby’s gut just before the voice continued, “Sorry, Coby, hold this.”

Coby wondered if maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t a dream; the pain of getting the air knocked out of him seemed way too real for that. As he fumbled to hold the tray which was suddenly in his arms, Coby shook his head, finally forcing himself to focus on what was going on around him. He looked around just in time to watch Admiral Luffy excitedly jump into someone’s arms for a hug—if you could call him wrapping himself around the poor person’s head like a rubbery octopus a ‘hug’ anyway.

“I think Torao’s suffocating,” a woman’s voice chimed in and Coby recognized the black haired woman as Nico Robin, one of the top officers directly under the Admiral. 

“Yeah, that would be a pretty pathetic end to the mighty Emperor,” another female officer, Nami, sighed before stepping forward and pulling on Luffy’s ear until it stretched away from his head.

Lazily untangling himself from the other person, the Admiral giggled, “Sorry, Torao.”

“You’re lucky I love you,” the poor man grumbled, prompting Luffy to laugh.

“I am!” he announced proudly, before standing up on his tiptoes to give Trafalgar Law a kiss on the cheek.

Wait.

When the realization hit him, that a navy Admiral was kissing one of the Four Emperors, Coby wanted to scream, cry, and laugh all at once. He couldn’t believe this. He refused believe this but there was not way this was a dream now. His mind could never come up with something so ridiculous, so absurd, so downright crazy.

This was really happening.

“I think our guest is gonna faint,” Franky noted, looking so very disinterested while he sipped in his cola, prompting Nico Robin to simply chuckle as she leaned into the cyborg’s side.

Coby felt someone step right up to him then. “I’ll take this before Sanji murders us for wasting food,” the man in a white jumpsuit and a hat with a little penguin on top told him helpfully before he took the tray from Coby’s arms.

And then, there was only blessed darkness.

—————

The first thing Coby registered was the loud familiar laughter of his superior. Coby hoped he was back in the barracks, in his bed. Or maybe the infirmary? It didn’t really matter to him. He wasn’t ready to open his eyes anyway.

“I swear, the one time I get out of a meeting with the Elders and you kids do this!” Garp howled. The laughter, still clear in his voice his voice, sounded slightly distorted as if coming from a transponder snail.

“Shut up, Garp! You’re not the one who has to clean up after them! Again!” Coby placed the new voice as Fleet Admiral Sengoku. Even muffled and seemingly coming from far away, his words sounded like he was was on the verge of a mental breakdown. Or murder.

Someone snorted then, this time clearer and louder, making Coby finally crack open one of his eyes to look who it was. He was sad to realize he was still on the submarine—probably the infamous Polar Tang—but he forced himself not to think about it. Instead, he focused on the two figures sitting on the floor on the other side of the room; Admiral Luffy and the other none other than Trafalgar Law. He could only stare blankly at where he Admiral was sitting in between the Emperor’s legs, leaning back against his chest with the pirate’s arms wrapped loosely around his waist. Luffy was holding a transponder snail receiver, where the voices of the two top navy men were coming from. They both looked so very comfortable and relaxed, a wide, happy grin on the Admiral’s face while Trafalgar smirked cheekily as if Sengoku could see him. It was all so bizarre that somehow, Coby wasn’t even surprised anymore.

Instead, the sight was… actually kind of adorable.

“Oh, by the way, gramps,” Luffy said then, completely ignoring the fuming Fleet Admiral. “I kinda accidentally took Coby with me. He’s fine, just sleeping.”

“He means he passed out,” Trafalgar supplied helpfully.

Luffy waved his hand dismissively, “Yes, that.”

“Thank God, I was kinda worried the Elders stole him,” Garp said. He didn’t sound very worried.

“Yeah, he looked like he needed a break anyway, so we’re gonna take him to party with us,” Luffy hummed thoughtfully, turning to look Coby’s way. The young marine quickly closed his eyes again; he wasn’t entirely sure why he felt like he should keep pretending to be asleep but it felt so wrong to let them know he was awake now.

“Just give him back in one piece,” Garp laughed.

“No promises,” Trafalgar shot back and Coby could just hear the smug smirk in his voice.

Luffy interrupted before Garp could, sounding a little sad, “We promised Ace no more body part jenga, he almost had a heart attack last time because he thought I got actually cut up.”

“Shit, I forgot,” Trafalgar groaned, his voice sounding muffled. When Coby dared to take a quick peek, he saw the pirate had buried his face in the crook of Luffy’s neck.

“Now that that’s settled, you kids should go have fun,” Garp announced cheerfully. “Happy birthday, Luffy. Enjoy your party.”

Luffy giggled, thanking his grandfather just as the person on the other end of the connection changed and Sengoku spoke up instead, “Happy birthday, Luffy, but if I get a repeat of Law’s birthday two years ago and I have to deal with another overthrown queen, I swear I will disown you, Trafalgar Law.”

“Sure, you will, gramps. Bye,” Law muttered before taking the receiver from Luffy’s hand and hanging up and Coby… decided he didn’t hear that last part. For the sake of the sad remains of his own sanity.

There was too much information to process as it was, he didn’t need the knowledge that Sengoku was related to Trafalgar Law on top of all this.

Long silence settled over the room after that. Coby almost thought the two had left but he didn’t dare open his eyes. And it was good that he didn’t because a few minutes later, he heard Luffy whisper, “We should get back to the others.”

“I don’t want to. I haven’t seen you in weeks,” Trafalgar replied voice equally soft.

“I know,” Luffy sighed. “I missed you so much.”

Law only hummed, staying silent for a moment before letting go of a frustrated groan. “I guess I have to share you today. But you’d better make it up to me during these two weeks,” he conceded.

“You don’t have to ask,” Luffy said cheekily without missing a beat.

“Good.”

Unable to help himself, Coby opened his eyes. Then immediately closed them again as he bore witness to about the most tender, most intimate kiss he had ever had the misfortune to intrude on. He felt terrible, like he was ruining the moment for them with his presence… even though they were the ones who had decided to do this while Coby was assumed to be sleeping right there.

“Happy birthday,” Law mumbled softly a moment later and even with his eyes closed, Coby could see the impossibly bright smile that undoubtedly spread on Admiral Luffy’s lips.

And despite himself, despite the whole navy and pirate thing, Coby he was happy for them.

Maybe some pirates weren’t so bad.

[yukipri]

How do you think the ASL brothers would change if it was Ace that was separated and Sabo stayed with Luffy on Dawn Island?

Hey there! I’m so sorry for taking my time with this ask! It’s a really great question and I wanted to take my time thinking about and typing out my answer...and well. It got LONG ^ ^;;;;;

Bc oh man do I think things would change a LOT, but in order to answer this question, let’s first sorta picture the scenario itself. How did Ace end up the one separated?

This could go a number of ways, but here’s one that comes to mind.

~~

The boys are running back from causing mischief in High Town, when Ace overhears some gossip.

Did you hear, the marines are coming! Apparently they found a terrible, terrible criminal, hiding right here in Goa, and they’re coming to get rid of him before the Celestial Dragons arrive!

A terrible criminal?

Oh dear, what terrible crime did they commit?

Well, nothing, apparently, or at least nothing yet.

What do you mean?

They say he’s the son of the most wanted, most terrible man in history. But don’t worry, the marines’ll take care of him before--

Ace feels like the world’s suddenly gone black and white. He feels numb, barely hearing Sabo shouting at him to hurry, barely registers Luffy tugging his hand and looking up at him with worry.

They’ve come for him. He should have known. Gramps may have tried to hide him, but there’s no escaping Gol D. Roger’s infamy.

Ace knows once he would have sneered, said See, Gramps? I knew this would happen. But now, he feels fear.

Ace doesn’t fear death, and will look it in the eye and punch it when it comes for him. But fear grips him now, as he stares blankly into the campfire Sabo’s set up, finally registering that Luffy’s calling his name and still tugging at his arm.

He doesn’t fear death for himself. But when they come for him, to end his life because of his blood, will they spare Sabo and Luffy? Will they spare the brothers of the Pirate King’s son?

Somehow, Ace doubts it.

And so he knows he’s got to go. He’s got to leave now, before they find him, before they find Sabo and Luffy, before they can steal away his family.

An adult Ace, looking back regretfully, would lament the timing of his brash actions. But Ace had never been a thinker, more of a doer, and he couldn’t bear the thought of losing his brothers--even now, he can’t.

And he couldn’t have known back then that the island had had two boys considered the sons of the worst criminals in history.

So he doesn’t blame his younger self for writing a sloppy letter, tucking it under Sabo’s head, and then fleeing into the night to steal a boat that he’d use to leave the island on come daybreak. Running away, leaving his brothers behind, making Sabo vow to continue looking after Luffy like he always had, until one day, the three of them could be reunited once more.

Young Ace doesn’t even know what a Celestial Dragon is. All he knows is that an enormous ship, the likes of which he’d never seen before, is approaching--

And then everything is FIRE, and then, blank.

Dragon and the Revolutionaries had been in the area, but not just to rescue people from the Gray Terminal fire. They had intel, and Dragon had reason to believe that the marines may have found Luffy, and his connection to Dragon. The commander of the Revolutionary Army kept his distance from his son, but he wasn’t going to let the child get slaughtered for his relation to a father he’d never even met.

He’d briefly run into Ace while he was stealing a boat. He hadn’t stopped the child, but had been curious about his raw desperation, his bitterness towards his blood, and his determination to protect his found family.

Dragon is surprised to find the boy in the wreckage of an utterly destroyed sailboat.

The boy is terribly burned, and has no memory of anything, not even his own name--but he is immediately terrified at the suggestion that they return him to the island, shouting that he doesn’t know why, but he can’t go back there, they’ll find Them and kill Them if I go back there, and it’ll all be my fault--!

He decides to let the boy stay. His name is Ace, they think, the name found among his belongings. With the Celestial Dragons come and gone, marine presence on the island also fades, and Dragon concludes that Luffy is safe for the time being. He sends a coded message to Garp to be careful, and then disappears back to Baltigo with his new charge.

After regaining his memories, adult Ace grudgingly admits that while he still wishes it’d never happened, there were some perks to memory loss.

For one, he’d completely forgotten that he was the son of the late Pirate King. He still had a weird fixation towards fathers, but after getting attached to Dragon, and Dragon accepting his protege’s need for a father figure, the desperation fades.

While not the best at studies, Ace is physical strong, and takes to Revolutionary Army training like he was born for it. He masters both Armament and Observation Haki by fourteen, and with his private training sessions with Dragon, is becoming terrifyingly proficient with Conqueror’s Haki as well.

Ace is still learning, but the power he exudes when unleashing Conqueror’s Haki makes Dragon curious (and some of their peers, nervous). He’s only ever heard of one person exhibiting the kind of power Ace seems to have the potential for.

There are also other perks to being a member of the Revolutionary Army. Dragon isn’t the most wanted criminal in history for no reason. The location of the Army headquarters in Baltigo is a tightly kept secret, one that the World Government has desperately been searching for ever since it was built, but to no avail.

Even as the Marines track the rumors of Gol D. Roger’s child, as long as Ace remains in Baltigo, it’s like he vanished into thin air. And should they have discovered Headquarters, the Pirate King’s son would have been the least of their concerns.

And so Ace grows strong, no longer shackled by self-hatred of his blood, but also haunted by nameless whispers that keep him up at night, a sense of foreboding and aching longing that he’s forgetting something vital about himself, something that he both needs to remember, and doesn’t dare to touch.

~~

On Dawn Island, on that fateful day, Sabo wakes up to find a letter written in a child’s familiar sloppy hand. He tries not to panic, knowing that Ace’s long gone, and tries to think rationally on how he should move next. Even with Ace’s clumsy words, Sabo understands what his brother had been trying to say.

They’d discovered Ace’s parentage. Ace felt that he would endanger Sabo and Luffy by staying with them. So Ace left the island early, by himself, entrusting Sabo with their younger brother.

Sabo doesn’t know how he can possibly tell Luffy that Ace left to protect them, and to convince him that they need to stay.

And then Sabo suddenly doesn’t need to, because suddenly there’s shouting below the tree house, and Luffy’s blearily sitting up.

Ace is dead.

~~

Sabo tries to maintain a level headed facade in front of Luffy (even if he cries, screams his lungs out for Ace in private). He needs to support their little brother, now more than ever. Ace is gone. Ace entrusted Sabo with Luffy.

Sabo will not lose Luffy.

~~

~~

What next?

There’s the chance that Sabo would act as Ace did, continuing training and then leaving the island at seventeen as promised.

But what if he didn’t? Seventeen is a number that Sabo chose, because noble-born children become fully fledged nobles at eighteen. But now there are other, more important things at stake now.

Given what happened to Ace, and the possibility of the marines returning, Garp tells Sabo about Luffy’s heritage (he hadn’t told Luffy yet, at Ace’s request, Ace not wanting Luffy to hate himself as Ace did. Garp doubted Luffy would react that way to Dragon, but he lets Ace have this, this attempt at protecting his little brother).

Knowing that Luffy’s the son of a man rapidly growing to be as infamous as the Pirate King kicks Sabo’s overprotective instincts into overdrive.

Sabo will not lose Luffy.

From here out, there’s three possible routes. The first two routes assume that Sabo’s parents never end up coming for him (they forgot about their son for five years, who says they wouldn’t for more).

1) Pirates Route:

Sabo swallows his pride, and agrees to join Luffy’s crew, much to the younger’s delight. The thought of being captain of his own crew now seems pale in comparison to keeping Luffy safe and also keeping his last promise to his lost brother. And so Sabo vows to stay at Luffy’s side as his guardian. They leave the island to become pirates together.

2) Marines Route:

Sabo demands that Garp take him and Luffy to be trained as marines. Sabo feels nothing for disdain for both the marines and World Government, and has every intention of taking Luffy and ditching as soon as they’re safe. But right now they can provide several things that he wants and needs:

1) He feels it’s too dangerous to remain on Dawn Island with potential government eyes on them, and Garp is a relatively secure way of ensuring they can leave. They know too little about the outside world now, and carelessly leaving on a boat and getting blasted like Ace is the last thing they need.

2) He wants training for both himself and Luffy, not just combat, but on how to survive at sea. The marines, at least, should be able to provide plenty of that experience.

3) Sabo doesn’t want to be caught unawares ever again. Ace fled because he’d overheard a rumor. If Sabo had known, perhaps the outcome would have been different. Sabo’s always been the thinker, the planner among the brothers, and he wants information, especially if there’s a chance that the government will make a move on Luffy. Sabo’s goal is to work his way up the ranks until he not only has access, but is in charge of investigations hunting the Revolutionary Army, and more importantly to him, the existence and location of the Commander’s rumored child. As Chief of marine intel, Sabo will be able to control what information goes to the higher ups, and which information needs to be quietly eliminated.

(and if his investigations into the Revolutionary Army leads him to become curious about the powerful fire logia user who is their Chief of Staff...)

3) Royalty Route:

Sabo’s parents find him, shortly after Ace’s “death,” and demand he returns to High Town and his noble heritage. With Ace gone, abandoning Luffy to a life by himself isn’t an option, but neither is letting his little brother be killed. So Sabo decides that he’s got to do what he must. Protect Luffy at all costs.

He strikes a deal with his parents. He’ll return to them, and he’ll be their perfect little noble son, but ONLY with the condition that Luffy comes with them. His parents are unhappy with the deal, but grudgingly agree, warning that if Sabo doesn’t truly impress them, they have no problem with, ah, eliminating both Sabo and his tag along because they have Stelly as a perfectly viable replacement.

Sabo can excel when he puts his mind to it, and although inside he froths with rage and hatred, he will do anything to keep Luffy safe.

Luffy is his one and only saving grace who keeps him sane. Luffy, who is now trapped in this birdcage alongside Sabo, and it’s all Sabo’s fault. He’s called Sabo’s “servant,” despite being incapable of doing chores, and is ignored by the entire household other than Sabo.

And while Luffy’s clearly uncomfortable, he doesn’t complain. He senses Sabo’s pain, and his suffering, and takes it upon himself to soothe his older brother, to keep him company, to love him. Luffy will never leave here, if it means leaving Sabo. Because nothing is more terrible than being alone and Luffy knows that best. 

So Sabo keeps moving forward, vowing to Ace every night that he’s going to protect Luffy, no matter what. If this is the hand that he’s been dealt, Sabo will just have to make do. Sabo wonders how far up the hierarchy he’ll have to climb in order to guarantee Luffy’s safety.

(or, Sabo eventually becomes King of Goa, and Luffy is his “servant.”)

~~

~~

Are just some possibilities I came up with! To anyone who made it to the bottom of this post, thanks for reading!

Do any of the three scenarios I came up with sound interesting? Which is your favorite/do you think is most likely? Should I write a follow up??

EDIT: >> Follow Up

❀ ❀ Send YukiPri an Ask! ❀ ❀

[casualcatte]

RP Journal: 08/14/2020

I made it a point to go in to the Night Raid Bounty Call a bit early so I could discuss the matter of the Kouyou Twintails with Tetsuro Wulf. I’m all for a good hunt, but there were a couple of missing bits of information to the hunt details that would have been /really/ useful to know. Rightly, he seemed a bit annoyed, but I reassured him that the job got done anyway, but that he’d probably want to give that client an earful for the lack of full disclosure. I’d have approached that job /much/ differently if I’d known it was a mated pair with young. Still, Edgard and I got it done and that’s what matters.

(Courtesy cut for length...!)

I perused the bounty board and found the /perfect/ job to do next. It’s right up Edgard’s alley, so I’ll get to see what he’s /really/ made of or if his talk about being a dragonslayer is just that, talk. The job is to hunt a dragon in the Dravanian Forelands, even if it hadn’t been a dragon and perfect for Edgard, I’d have still taken it.  The Forelands are home and I’m not about to let some renegade beastie run rampant out there.  Especially not when I’m on my way out to Ishgard anyway.

I saw Loksia briefly while there and we arranged to take on the bounty she took for us sometime next week. She took herself off with a pair of her friends not long after, some talk of a spar going on between them on the beach.

I overheard some talk from upstairs, Z’rhun, R’zunh, and Mu’ra had returned from their hunt -- injured, of course!  I gave it a short bit before I went to see them. Zunh, of course, bruised already fractured ribs. Rhun cracked some ribs.  And Mu’ra broke an arm.  All-in-all, not too terrible, but still I would’ve preferred them to not be injured at all. I swear, I feel like I’m going to have to start following them on these hunts just to make sure they make it out in one piece!

I’d nearly forgotten about the Hunter’s Haven tomorrow. I should invite Edgard to come, since it sounds right up his alley.  A place to boast and tell tall tales of his hunting adventures?  I’m not sure there’s enough room in the Night Raid Headquarters to fit how inflated his ego would get.

I sat down in the bar afterward with Zunh and Mu’ra and a couple of their friends. Mostly talking to Mu’ra since he seemed the odd-man out. If there’s one thing I learned tonight it’s that Mu’ra really opens up to you when you give him nerdy book things to talk about. He’s especially interested in Nymian Marines and the like.  He would probably get along well with Miss Ironleaf, the elezen that runs the infirmary at the Stars’ Rest.  She’s even got a real-life faerie, just like the Nymians of old! 

Mu’ra expressed a desire to have one of their soulstones so that he, too, could become a Nymian Marine for true. I told him I’d keep an eye out and an ear to the ground for him, though I have no idea where to even start looking for that sort of thing. 

Everything began to die down not long after, even Rhun put in an appearance from the infirmary finally, if only to wolf down the food the Little Brothers had gotten for him. I took my leave not long after, since it was well past closing. 

Once that was all done, it was time to head to Ishgard. No doubt Edgard was already wondering if I’d even show up given that he’d had to do without me for an entire day!  I’d needed to turn in the bounty, though, and pick up the new assignment. I think he’ll be pleased. I also spent the day concluding all of my business in Kugane. It’s a pity that part of the reward today was a week’s stay at the Bokairo, because I wouldn’t really need it now. There didn’t seem to be a use-by date on it, so perhaps I can keep it for a Kugane-cation of my own sometime when the world gets to be too much.

No sooner than I crossed the Gates of Judgment, I was assessing the city and where best it might be to find the big dope when Edgard pretty much walked right up to me. I swear, it’s like he has this sixth sense on where I am at all times and can unerringly find me there.  It’s uncanny!

It was Banter as Usual  right off the bat, but I made it a point to deliver his part of the reward and tell him about the job I’d picked up. Or, at least I would have if someone hadn’t cranked Edgard’s flirtation meter up to eleven. Good Gods, I know he’s a flirtatious git sometimes, but this was really going overboard. I suppose I can’t really blame him for going ham, after all, I know he’s not serious about any of it. Maybe that makes me a safe person to just let loose and get it out of his system. Still, if he wanted to play as if he was Gods’ Gift to Womankind, I’d oblige him by not taking the bait.

After all, I’m a renown Centurio Hunter here. Any young hunter for malms around would kill for the honor of going on a hunt with me. Just because this was Ishgard didn’t mean that he had any advantage over me here.

He decided we’d meet in the Forgotten Knight and we could go over the details of the hunt. No sooner than I walked in was I greeted by fellow hunters and Centurio Clan members, welcomed as if returning home. There were old faces and new, eager glances in the hopes of a fresh hunt and a known Huntress looking for a partner. This is what Edgard walked into the middle of.

Perhaps it was just my imagination, but Edgard /glared/ at them, then he proclaimed loudly that I wasn’t the blue catte any of them were looking for -- could it be that he was jealous?  Concerned that I might actually choose one of them for a partner over him?  It’s a queer thought to think Edgard so possessive.  I know he’s said that I matter to him, but I don’t think I matter /quite/ that much.  So what gives?

It’s neither here nor there, though, as there were much bigger fish to fry in the form of one corrupted dragon. I rolled out a map of the Forelands and the flyer I’d gotten at the Bounty Call. Outlining the location and the quarry for Edgard, I listened to his input for a plan. He wanted to go in hard and I tended to agree. Dragons aren’t something you toy with. My thought was to have Edgard lie in wait in the high hills surrounding the Feast while I lure the beast out of the ruins and into a clear area off to the west, away from the rivers. It would mean entirely trusting my life on Edgard’s skill as a dragoon, but if he’s even half the warrior he claims to be, then I have faith in him.

While we had our discussion there was, naturally, banter among the hunters around us. Several of them cutting into Edgard’s attempts to flirt with me with flirtations of their own. Gods, I swear men think it’s a competition sometimes! One thing I noticed, though, is that Edgard got… aggravated, even snapping at some of them for their attempts. I swear, at one point, he even moved closer to me!  

It didn’t stop us from formulating a plan that I think will do fine. My only concern is leaving Edgard to the dragon’s mercy while I retreat up into the hills. I know this is what dragoons do, what they’ve been bred and trained for, but I can’t help but feel a little concerned. I’ll stick to the plan. The largest concern is where we’re going to find someone that speaks dragon to talk to Anyx Trine on our behalf.  Because I’ll be damned if we’re hunting a dragon without their blessing and risking the treaty.  Even we Tailfeather bumpkins know that much about Ishgard politics.

The flirtations from the hunters really seemed to get under Edgard’s skin, he even asked that we have these meetings elsewhere in future because it was all too distracting for him. Too distracting for Edgard Beaumont.  Imagine that!  The man is a walking distraction of goofiness and idle flirtation and he gets agitated over a bunch of hunters finding their bravado in their cups! They’re half the reason I tolerate Edgard as well as I do. I’ve been exposed to their banter for years, so I’m used to it and it doesn’t bother me.  Gods, it seemed to bother Edgard, though I couldn’t tell you why.

I’ll head out early in the morning to stop by the Convictory and look into the sightings of the Saurotaun that Lorrendor told me of, see if they bear any fruit. Damn, I meant to ask Edgard about the scattered pieces of the beast’s prey; that doesn’t seem like dragon behavior, but I’d like to confirm it with an “expert” so to speak. If this is, indeed, some manner of magical construct, it would explain so, so much. It will also change what I look for in the future. I’ve been hunting a beast, thinking in the patterns beasts do.  A magical construct won’t have those habits.  I’ll have to learn more about them to decide how to proceed.

I’m looking forward to the hunt. Despite his ego and his bluster, it will be interesting to see Edgard in his prime element. For now, I must rest.  It’s going to be a long, /long/ day tomorrow.

Mentions @nightraid-hq​ for the Night Raid Bounty Call and Hunter’s Haven @tetsuro-wulf​ for Tetsuro Wulf @definefandom​ for R’zunh Tia @therpperson​ for Edgard Beaumont And some other nerds that don’t have Tumblrs!

[hottytoddynews]

110th Squadron displays scorecard in front of Mustang to mark end of war

My father kept a diary during the Second World War.  For three years now, writing a book based on it, I have been living with the Fifth Air Force.  “The Forgotten Fifth,” it has been called:  its bomber and fighter squadrons defended Australia and fought their way north to the Philippines, on the far side of the world, while Army publicity units filmed B-17’s bombing Germany and the Marines won fame for storming islands in the Pacific.

This Memorial Day, the Fifth Air Force deserves to be remembered.  And as we honor the veterans who remain, we might honor them best by remembering them as what they were a crowd of young men, boisterous overall – some of them reckless, some of them careful, some of them heroes. Far from home, they defeated Japan.

In the Fifth Air Force, the gunners and mechanics were college-age, and the lieutenants and captains were barely older.  Many colonels were still in their twenties.  They found themselves in New Guinea, hundreds of miles from any city, setting up tents and digging privies.  They stole each other’s Jeeps and scrounged Coca-Cola machines for their clubs.  Some painted girlie pictures on their bombers.  Some traded unit patches as if the Army were a branch of the Boy Scouts.

They were not saints.  Lieutenant Bailey gypped my father and three other lieutenants when selling them a pint of what they thought was ice cream.  Staff Sergeant Cahill in the combat camera section had a sideline in pornography.  Corporal Dare in the motor pool became known as a smart-aleck – and as a satyr, when he went on leave to Australia.  Things were fine there, he reported back, people accepted you as long as you stayed sober, and the women were okay too.  On his last day of leave, down on the beach, he had met a girl and had sex with her four times in one afternoon.  After the war, Dare went back to California, where he ran a paint and body shop.  The women there were okay as well.  The records show he was married at least three times.

They groused, continually.  They all wanted to be promoted, and they all wanted to go home.  Second Lieutenant Hartbard thought it unjust that he had not already made first lieutenant.  Captain Seitz, the dentist, complained that the Army Medical Corps was run by doctors.  Baptist chaplains complained that the Army Chaplain Corps was run by Roman Catholics.  Lieutenants thought that their reconnaissance wing was top-heavy with colonels.  Lieutenant Beck the Montana rancher thought that serving as WAC’s or nurses made women coarse; so did a group of sergeants whom my father overheard discussing “the post-war woman situation.” 

Hard-drinking hard-living fighter pilots figure in war movies – but not all pilots lived hard or drank.  In my father’s air group, Bertram Sill shot down two Japanese warplanes flying a bomber; his B-25 Mitchell nicknamed “Mitch the Witch”; he did it not by roaring into combat, but by banking and weaving to give his turret gunners clear shots at the enemy.  On the ground, Sill was known as an ace at contract bridge.  Verne Murphy was a slight, skinny pilot with black hair and a black mustache: he looked like Charlie Chaplin, or worse – Charlie Chaplin with a limp, and bad kidneys.  He was, in fact, the best flyer in his squadron.  Rubel Archuleta, who grew up on a homestead in New Mexico, was teaching school when the war started.  When he took over as squadron commander, a different tone sounds in the squadron records.  Under his command, the 110th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron started calling themselves The Flying Musketeers.  Their new squadron blazon was a swordsman flexing his rapier (not the prewar cartoon of a goggle-wearing Missouri mule), and bombed convoys and fought it out with flocks of Zeros.  Archuleta led the 110th across the Philippines and north to Okinawa.

The first man to face a court-martial was Lieutenant Zock.  James Albert Zock was from Acadia Parish, in the Cajun rice country.  Before the war, he was a football coach.  He was a special services officer who specialized in running squadron softball teams.  Zock showed bonhomie in other ways: he played blackjack well and found liquor for the officers’ club.  When the group sent a B-25 on the first beer run to Australia, Zock took charge.  Then a clerk noticed a code in Zock’s letters home.  He had signaled to his family where he was based, by spelling out the location with the first letter of the first word in every paragraph.  Fifth Air Force command recommended that Zock is court-martialed under the 104th Article of the Articles of War. This sounded ominous; in fact, it meant “company punishment,” the lightest sort of Army sanction – confinement to quarters, not the post stockade.  Zock was soon back coaching softball.

Sometimes, from a few newspaper clippings, you can sketch the outline of a man’s story, and sense the costs of the war.  Curtis Hancock was the pilot of a bomber shot down, by mistake.  He was flying a mission to drop maps to troops on the beachhead; the American anti-aircraft gunners saw his plane coming in low, with its bomb-bay doors open, didn’t wait to check the markings, and shot the plane down.  Captain Hancock was twenty-four when he died.  He was a cheerful-looking young man, and he had more than 50 missions under his belt – enough to go home if he had been flying in other theaters of war.  He left a wife in California, a mother in Texas, and a little daughter, sixteen months old.   Four years later, Captain Hancock’s remains were brought home to Texas.  The Lubbock newspapers mentioned his mother Addie and his daughter Nancy, both living nearby in Lamesa, and that his widow (not named) could be found in Florida.

The chaplains were very good.  They preached on weekends, and during the week they took care of their flocks.  They organized discussion groups and jazz bands.  They set up holiday celebrations. The chaplains were the only officers who could keep the Colonels in line.  When a flight surgeon kept a Red Cross girl in his tent overnight, or a group of colonels fired pistols and rolled dynamite downhill after midnight, to enliven a promotion party, it was the chaplains who called them to account.  Chaplain Smith, new to New Guinea, had no hesitation in writing to General Douglas MacArthur.

Chaplain Smith – Captain Charles Frederick Smith, my father’s unit chaplain – was the hardest officer to trace.  My father knew Chaplain Smith as a hard-working pastor, a very tall man who played the violin.  You would think that a tall Baptist preacher who played the violin would attract attention – but that wasn’t so.  His names were too common: even if an internet search turned up a minister named Charles F. Smith, you could not be sure it was the right man. The wartime Army chaplain school at Harvard had his military assignments; those records went up only to 1945.  In 1956, a Reverend Charles Smith surprised his congregation by resigning as pastor of a large church in North Carolina.  That might have been Chaplain Smith – this Reverend Smith was known as a scholar and had built a new sanctuary and had musical interests – but for two years, the trail went cold.  Finally I found the right Chaplain Smith; it was the same man.  When he resigned his pulpit, he went into teaching – that was what had shocked his church. He made a second career of it, as a teacher and principal and high-school counselor. 

My father’s diary was an unvarnished history. He wrote of Chaplain Smith’s ministry and Lieutenant Zock’s contretemps and the other officers’ gripes – he was disgruntled himself.  With the rest of the Fifth Air Force, he lived in tropical heat and downpours and coral dust – sometimes in combat with the Japanese, sometimes tied up in quartermasters’ snafus and headquarters politics.  The airmen knew the ironies of the war.  They earned their honors, their decorations and the title of the Greatest Generation, in a war for which they were drafted, in battles that their nation too often overlooked.  The greater irony and their achievement was that even though it was not the war they would have chosen, they showed the strength to win it.

Allen Boyer, Book Editor for HottyToddy, is a native of Oxford.  He lives and writes on Staten Island.  His new book “Rocky Boyer’s War: An Unvarnished History of the Air Blitz That Won the War in the Southwest Pacific,” a WWII history drawing on his father’s diary, has been published by the Naval Institute Press.

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The post “For the Fifth Air Force – On Memorial Day” appeared first on HottyToddy.com.

[cipher-zoo]

Koby: What's wrong?

Helmeppo: I have this weird self-esteem issue, where I hate myself but I still think I'm better than everyone else.

[slqttttt]

very relatable...

Koby: What's wrong?

Helmeppo: I have this weird self-esteem issue, where I hate myself but I still think I'm better than everyone else.